Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments The writing of this book would have been impossible without the generous help of many persons. First and foremost I want to honor Jacob Neusner, Michael
Polanyi, and Willy Rordorf. Each contributed his special know-how in my quest to understand the Didache. Each of their contributions was profound and enduring.
Without these giants I would not have had the strong shoulders to stand on, so as to see far.
Carol Andreini, Associate Professor of Classics at North Dakota State University, provided me with a fresh translation of the Greek text at the very beginning of this project in 1988. During the following year, thanks to a Lilly Endowment
Grant, we were able to work side by side over a period of weeks, sorting out the nuances of the koinē Greek of the Didache and identifying classical parallels. While the final form of the translation is my responsibility, its content and consistency reflect her expertise and linguistic insights.
Dozens of colleagues offered me feedback and insights on the many academic papers and public presentations I gave on various topics related to the Didache.
Among these, John Dominic Crossan, codirector of the Jesus Seminar, Philip Culbertson of St. John's College (New Zealand), and Jonathan Draper of the University of Natal (South Africa) deserve special recognition due to our hours of exchange and our shared concern to unearth the social questions behind the Didache. Dennis C. Duling, Deirdre Good, Rabbi Simchah Roth, Richard Sarason, and Eileen Schuller offered me invaluable feedback on key questions along the way. The students in my Didache seminars, both in Cincinnati and in Neuchâtel, are also to be recognized for their sustained attention to the internal structure of the text and their creative efforts to draw out its pastoral genius. I frequently came away from class realizing that I had learned more than I had taught.
During the long course of my research I was grateful to have received financial assistance and public recognition in the form of grants and faculty fellowships from the Association of Theological Schools, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Lilly Foundation (twice). My thanks also go to Linda and Gilbert Bartholomew for their sustained personal and financial assistance.
Recognition is also due to the library staff of United Theological Seminary (Dayton) for offering me unlimited access to their academic collection, and to the Rev. James Christy, pastor of the Greene Street Methodist Church (Piqua), for providing me urgently needed office space.
As this book was being fashioned, a companion website, www.Didache.info, was taking shape by its side. The latter promises to enable students, pastors, and scholars to find a relaxed, user-friendly forum for exchanging insights and evaluating fresh discoveries occasioned by study of the former. I am indebted to Martin Heine (www.lightartvision.de) for designing an attractive, state-of-the-art home page that I have been able to modify and expand for this purpose. L. C.
Macouno (www.alienhelpdesk.com) has greatly assisted me in setting up a flawless discussion forum. Finally, my appreciation goes to the Center for Innovative Learning at the University of Victoria (British Columbia) for showing me that book-learning and interactive-web-learning are intimate companions.
They are the attractive twin sisters nurturing the love of learning in our electronic age.
Linda Maloney of Liturgical Press has been singularly helpful in correcting the manuscript and guiding it through the publishing process. Even in our initial exchanges Linda saw the need for making available to a wide audience the analytical, gender-inclusive translation of the Didache that formed the foundation of my thousand-page commentary with Paulist Press. Kathy Zdroik laboriously typed and proofread the Greek text. Finally, Linda had me draft "Questions for Review and Study" and offer study aids that would make this small volume a userfriendly resource bringing together literary criticism and sociological analysis in order to reconstruct the faith, hope, and life of those mid-first-century Christian communities using the Didache.
My beloved wife, Deborah Rose-Milavec, sustained me throughout the writing of this book. More than anyone else, she encouraged me to write not just for scholars, pastors, and students, but for ordinary people as well. Deb is the former director of a women's shelter in Sidney. Even the victims of domestic violence, Deb continually reminded me, might well have a spiritual hunger for the Didache.
Ordinary people need to be engaged by religious institutions without being tyrannized, nourished without being force-fed, listened to without being patronized. This is the undercurrent quietly running below the surface of the Didache. The whole subtext speaks of ordinary holiness accomplished by ordinary people in extraordinarily difficult times. The battered women passing through Deb's shelter may well be the first to understand this and to welcome such a healing message into their lives.
I want to acknowledge the courage and pastoral sensitivity of those capable pastors of the mid-first-century who collaboratively crafted the Didache as their matrix for training gentiles longing to acquire the skills to walk in the Way of Life revealed by our Father/Mother. In the stillness of the night these pastors spoke to me. I was frequently so dazzled with their practical and divinely-inspired genius that I was forced to rise from my warm bed, grab a bathrobe, and quickly capture
their fading voices on the chilly keys of my word processor. May they be blessed in their sleep, and blessed in their awakening!
Last but not least I acknowledge "the four winds" (Did. 10:5) that refreshed my soul while writing this book by ushering in quiet layers of fog, fierce thunderstorms, and dancing snowflakes. For those trees whose lives were extinguished in order that this book might have pages, I offer my humble prayer.
Likewise, I would be remiss if I did not ask pardon for the excessive suffering inflicted on birds, animals, and fish as a byproduct of the modern technology of forestry and paper production. Nearly all pulp mills in Europe recycle the staggering amounts of water necessary for paper production. In the United States and Canada, however, even while mills have taken some measures to reduce their toxic emissions, every mill hourly discharges thousands of gallons of contaminated water into the natural environment. Wildlife downstream without access to bottled water and children of poorer families without access to a swimming pool are at risk. In the state of Washington a full third of the total industrial toxic discharge comes from local paper mills. Bald eagles, the proud icons of American freedom, helplessly watch their young die, even though they are nesting miles from those contaminated waters. The tragedy is that here in "the land of the free, the home of the brave," the very words heralding the Way of Life are printed on the inexpensive paper made possible by an industry practicing the Way of Death.